The
social media buzz that preceded the inaugural concert of Auckland’s newest
artistic venture, hear|say generated significant mystique and interest with a
series of suggestive images. The
concert, the brainchild of composers Eve de Castro-Robinson and Alex Taylor,
took place in the Tim Melville Gallery in Newton. The minimalist white-washed walls of the
warehouse sparsely decorated with photography by Roberta Thornley provided an
evocative, yet unobtrusive backdrop to the varied offerings of the concert. And varied it was, with a meeting of minds
between music, visuals, and performance art.

The
concert opened with verve and vigour as Helen Medlyn swaggered on in town crier
getup to deliver the introduction and housekeeping with wit and panto theatrics. A fun-filled whimsy which set the mood well
for the more camp elements of the concert, yet felt at odds with the more
experimental and ritualistic items.

First
was one such item, Eve de Castro-Robinson’s whorl
for bass drum, one of the composer’s several short intimate pieces
involving focussed gesture and objects. Performer
Amy Jansen poised like a warrior in front of the bass drum, drawing bold circles
over the skin which slowly spiralled outwards, the sound gently rumbling
beneath the pencil. There was a certain
tension in these quietest of sounds, in part with the knowledge of the volume
the bass drum is capable of, and the repetitive fluctuations in motion with
each orbit of the pencil. It was a piece
in which sound, movement and visuals were inextricably bound.

Ben Hoadley and Andrew Uren, two of Auckland’s woodwind
heavyweights, took on Hoadley’s own Manaia
IV. A hugely expansive piece, it threatened
idea overload at times, yet each idea seemed like a logical progression from
the last. There was an organic synergy
developed between the instruments.
Uren’s attention to the subtleties of the bass clarinet’s dynamic range
connected with the expressive virtuosity of Hoadley’s bassoon, raucous clarinet
ululations contrasted with bassoon arabesques.
It seemed virtually every relationship under the sun was explored
through the performers’ shapeshifting.

Marina Abramović, the “grandmother of
performance art” was given her dues in a rendition of her confrontational vocal
collaboration with Ulay, AAA – AAA. PerformersAmy Jansen and Callum Blackmore began by
eyeballing each other from opposite ends of the space. They emitted guttural roars, disturbing in
nature, at once pained, threatening, possibly orgasmic. Almost imperceptibly at first, Jansen drew
closer with rising pitch until they were pressed together nose-to-nose in a spittle-slinging,
vein-popping, screaming climax. Such
performance required two performers of equal presence and intensity, and Jansen
and Blackmore were more than up to the task. However despite the quality of
performance, the idea that we were watching a reenactment of an intensely
personal expression between Abramović and Ulay did not sit so well. The inevitable knowledge of this meant that
the piece lost some of its original impulsive purity over to artifice.

Composer-musicologist Celeste Oram presented an
archaeological restoration of forgotten New Zealand silver: One Vera Wyse Munro, apparently a pioneer of
experimental music with a fantastically peculiar past, and rather
extraordinarily lost to the mists of time.
The performance of the remarkable Skywave
Symphony began long before we assembled in the gallery. Allegedly scored for 100 radios tuned to
different frequencies from around the country, today’s social media-connected
audience members were asked to download a track from a range of radio static
recordings. This gently roiling static
formed a backdrop which enveloped white tones and insectoid scrabblings from
violin and offstage bass clarinet.
Eventually this gave over to fragments of radio tunings from a dedicated
radio chorus, bringing us forth to snatches of recognition from our current
reality. Regardless of whether or not this
modern rendition had any serious connection with 1940s sonotopographies of Te
Anau or Portobello, the earthy soundscape of the piece was very effective.

If being ushered behind a safety line and the butcher’s
block of a table didn’t tip off the audience to the coming trauma of Korean-American
Nam June Paik’s One, there would have
little doubt left as performer Joe Harrop entered, reverently cradling a violin
like an infant. Divinely bathed in rays
from the skylights, the violin began the inexorable journey towards its fate as
Harrop raised it high above his head in painfully slow motion. Like the final two bars of The Rite of Spring, time held its
breath, and the world hung in the balance.
Then a swift axe-stroke and an explosion of wood, and the sacrifice was
complete with almost business-like efficiency.

Alliteration abounded in the next series of works. Both the title and the programme note
“Tasty!” of Chris Watson’s Mandible for
bass clarinet drew attention to the mechanical manipulations of Andrew Uren’s
mouth as he navigated a smorgasbord of tongue-slaps, multiphonics, subtones,
and flutter-tonguings, the latter sometimes breaking free from the mouthpiece
as cheek-quivering purrs. With its
technical sheen and a free-jazz-like spirit, this was a virtuosic piece in a
very fundamental sense.

There was more mandible to be found in co-director Alex
Taylor’s poem Man alive. With
notebook in hand as a prop and zebra-skin pants, Taylor recited his word-play with
witty efficacy, sometimes rattling off salvos of rapid-fire man-words, sometimes
chewing over a particularly choice phrase.

Samuel Holloway’s Malleus
had a much more severe tone. Three
clarinets performed a single melismatic line, the texture ruptured by tiny fluctuations
in tempo and intonation, provoking a somewhat unnerving reaction. In fact, true to the work’s title, these
disturbances began to have a very physical effect on the inner ear. As the trio’s languid trajectory continued
towards a high-register forte, the nauseating ringing in the ears brought the
piece to an almost unbearable apex, yet it was a deft and ingenious execution
of the piece’s goal.

Alex Taylor then returned with a cover of recently departed
kiwi legend Graham Brazier’s Blue Lady. Taylor’s lilting baritone was rich with
nuance, and the innocent tinkling of his accompanying toy piano provided a spectral
juxtaposition to the world-weary lyrics.
His choice to finish with a throat-singing drone appeared a bit of a non
sequitur at first, yet became illuminating when Joe Harrop entered and the
drone became a tonic backdrop to a solo violin rendition of Douglas Lilburn’s Canzonetta No.1. Though this year has been inundated with
Lilburn tributes, being his centenary, the simple purity of the violin melody
was the exact release the concert needed at its end.

It was also a thoughtful and creative gesture to link two of
New Zealand’s disparate musical luminaries to close with, and was symbolic of
what hear|say appears to stand for; a breaking down of programmatic borders,
and an all-encompassing celebration of diverse musical and artistic expression. The structure of the concert itself was very
well-considered, with a satisfyingly natural flow between items, and a
consideration of tension and release as a macro-level parameter. If this debut is anything to go by, then we
eagerly look forward to future ventures from hear|say.